Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Recently, Comcast sent a letter promoting their Xfinity.tv site, which enables subscribers to watch TV shows from their computers. Showing off just how high-tech they’ve become, part of their letter also included a QR code. If you’re not familiar, QR codes are bar codes which can be scanned by mobile phones (and other devices). The scanner will then decode the code and show relevant information. This is Comcast’s QR code:

“It’ll be simple!”, the letter lied.

This QR code promised to show a demo of the Xfinity service. Having never used a QR code before, I decided to give it a shot. In my experience, these are the steps needed to use the QR code:

Granted, twelve of those steps could have been skipped with better luck, and things would be faster the second time around. Still, QR codes are a whole lot of work just to get a simple web address, especially if you know YouTube offers shortened URLs. This particular movie, for instance, can be reached at http://youtu.be/sshEnDe8tCo. Sure, if you’re a monkey pecking at a keyboard, it would likely take decades to get there. For the rest of us, however, it’s a much faster way to get to those important promotional videos.

Perhaps the best part of this whole fiasco? The “QR” in “QR code” stands for “Quick Response”.